Designing and Programming Survey Forms

Data, Democracy & Development (DDD) summer field practice course

Ayush Patel

At Azim Premji University

10 May, 2025

Hello

I am Ayush.

I am a researcher working at the intersection of data, development and economics.

I am a RStudio (Posit) certified tidyverse Instructor.

I am a Researcher at Oxford Poverty and Human development Initiative (OPHI), at the University of Oxford.

Hello (Eh bonjour– donc–.) by Charles Motte

Did you come prepared?

Do you have a SurveyCTO account? if not, register for a free account here

Please download the SurveyCTO Collect app on your phone

Armor (Gusoku) Helmet signed by Bamen Tomotsugu

Learning Goals

Get a working understanding of how components of survey tech work.

Design and program a survey questionnaire to make it available for field use.

Extract the collected data for analyses.

Build an intuition on how to ask questions.

What we will not cover

Advanced methods of communicating with servers using API.

Data encryption for sensitive data.

Building data pipelines that extract, clean and present analyses.

Sampling theory, and analyses.

Components of survey tech

and how it works

But Why should I know this stupid tech stuff? ¹

Reckless Learning-1 (20-30 Mins)

For a group of 5-7 members. (2 mins)
Navigate to your own SurveyCTO console. Explore the Design, Collect, Monitor, Export and Configure tabs. (3 mins)
Choose one person from your group. We will use their SurveyCTO server for this exercise. (1 min)
Add the remaining members as team to the chosen one’s server. (3 min)
All members to login to the chosen server workspace in the SurveyCTO Collect App. (2 mins)
Using the Design tab in server console, upload this form. Only to be carried out on the chosen one’s server. (3 mins)
Use the SurveyCTO Collect app to get the blank form. (2 mins)
Use the SurveyCTO Collect app to record data using the new for for as many people as you can. (5 mins)
Use the SurveyCTO Collect app to submit the collected forms. (2 mins)
Go to the console of the chosen one’s server. In the Export tab, find the submitted data. Get this data and take a look. (5 mins)

Great Job. We will now explore several available features for designing survey forms.

Form Definition.

The Bare Bones

Say, there is only one single question. Nothing else is of interest to you. Everyone and anyone can be asked this question.

What would the form definition then look like?

First (name,label), you need the exact phrasing of the question.

Second (type), what is the type of answer that you expect and accept? (a number, a date, an image?)

Third (constraint), any reasonable constraints on the answers? (an age range, a date range ?)

Reckless Learning-2 (5 mins)

Create a copy of the file from the previous example.

Rename the file.

Open the newly renamed file. Remove all rows except the title rows from the survey sheet.

As discussed in the previous slide, add a single question in the survey sheet. Populate all necessary columns.

Remove all rows except the title row from the choices sheet.

Add row in choices sheet if needed.

Change the form title, and form ID in the settings sheet.

Upload the form on your server and test.